L.A. live fire updates: L.A. prepares for ‘worst-case scenario’ as rain brings risk of floods, landslides

As devastating wildfires blaze through multiple pockets of L.A., they continue to take a toll on residents from all walks of life — including comedians, whose job it is to make people laugh in these times of tragedy, even as some have also been evacuated or lost their homes.

Southern California native and longtime Malibu resident, podcaster and comedian Adam Carolla recently spoke with The Times about his experience evacuating from the fires, and how his condo miraculously survived. Carolla, who is constantly performing in L.A. and around the country, spoke about what he knows so far about the city of Malibu, his upcoming gigs — including the Comedy Fantasy Camp in Hollywood this weekend — and his opinions on jokes about the fires and other tragedies. He also talked about his decision to leave California due to state policies and taxes, and where he eventually plans to relocate.

With residents anxious to return to their fire-ravaged properties, authorities are warning of the dangers of sifting through the toxic wreckage — especially without protective gear.

Hazardous items in the fire zones can include batteries, ammunition, propane tanks, pesticides, and cleaning products that can become unsafe when exposed to heat and fire. Harmful chemicals can be present in the ash in charred neighborhoods, according to experts.

SACRAMENTO —  Former Vice President Kamala Harris took a wise step toward potentially running for governor in her first action after returning to California.

She visited wildfire victims, volunteers and firefighters in Altadena and helped distribute free meals to people burned out of their homes.

Trump said he was stunned by the devastation in L.A. and vowed to work with local officials to rebuild and help victims.

“We have to work together to get this really worked out,” Trump said. “I don’t think you can realize how...devastating it is until you see it.”

My first news of the Palisades fire came from a message in my neighborhood WhatsApp group. I learned from my neighbors in Del Rey that a blaze had broken out in the hills — above the neighborhood I grew up in, where my parents still live in our family home on the edge of the Palisades.

My own neighborhood of Del Rey was likely out of harm’s way. Yet as we all learned how quickly the fire was spreading, the neighborhood WhatsApp transformed into a mini resource center, sharing tips for staying safe and volunteering spare bedrooms and ADUs. A call for available deep freezer storage for an evacuee’s breast milk was met with offer upon offer. Everyone made space.

Greg Bolin returned to his home in Paradise, Calif., to find his wife in tears. She had been watching news coverage of the firestorms in Los Angeles.

“It’s just exactly — these people, they’re lost. They don’t know where to go,” Bolin recalled her saying.

Hundreds of child-care providers affected by the L.A. fires have been forced to shut their facilities and dozens of sites were destroyed, leaving scores of working families scrambling for care and dealing a blow to an already fragile sector in the region.

As of Thursday, 37 child-care facilities were reported destroyed in the fires; 21 were child-care centers, and 16 were family child-care homes. An additional 284 were non-operational because of ash, debris, power outages or a lack of potable water, according the California Department of Social Services.

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Pacific Palisades resident Dave Harvilicz drove to the intersection of Brooktree Road and West Sunset Boulevard on Friday afternoon to catch a glimpse of President Trump’s arrival.

The intersection, blocked off by military humvees and local police, was roughly a mile from the remains of Harvilicz’s home on Mount Holyoke Avenue, one of hundreds destroyed by the Palisades fire.

Facing growing scrutiny over whether one of its transmission towers sparked the Eaton fire, Southern California Edison this week said that an encampment was found roughly 300 yards downhill from the tower in Eaton Canyon.

Edison did not directly link the camp to a possible cause of the fire, and attorneys who are suing the utility expressed deep skepticism that it was involved in the fire that burned more than 7,000 homes and killed 17 people.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it will open a new recovery center in Altadena for those who incurred damage from the Eaton fire.

The Altadena Disaster Recovery Center will open Monday at 540 W. Woodbury Road and will operate from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Representatives from state and federal agencies will be present to assist anyone who experienced damage to a primary home, personal property loss or other emergency related to the wildfires.

Juana Rodriguez, administrator of Two Palms Care Center in Altadena, had just arrived at her home in Riverside. She washed up, prepared to eat dinner with her family, and then got an urgent call from her on-duty nurse.

Fire was approaching the facility, home to 45 elderly and disabled patients ranging in age from mid-60s to 103, many of them bedridden, some with dementia.

A week before President Trump’s first inauguration, L.A. County leaders were entering the resistance era.

“Here is what I want all communities to know,” then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell told county supervisors in January 2017. “My deputies will not initiate any police activity nor arrest anyone based solely on their immigration status. It’s our promise.”

The risk of debris flow — a type of landslide that can cause severe damage — around recently burned areas in Los Angeles County is growing as this weekend’s rains approach.

There is now a 10% to 20% chance of significant debris flow for sensitive recently burned areas of L.A. County; that’s up from an earlier estimate of 5% to 10%. The chance of debris flows for other burn scars remains 5% to 10%.

President Trump surveyed destruction in Pacific Palisades on Friday, spoke with residents who had lost their homes and expressed shock at the level of devastation.

But across town in Altadena, some residents watching those sober scenes hoped the staggering losses in their own community would not be forgotten.

Despite delivering blistering criticism of California leaders from afar, President Trump shared a warm embrace with Gov. Gavin Newsom and appeared to pledge his support to Los Angeles as he stepped onto state soil Friday for the first time in his second term.

The president said he appreciated Newsom — whom he often publicly derides as “Newscum” — greeting him on the tarmac and promised to help “fix” damages in the fire-ravaged state.

Three days after the Eaton fire devoured his Altadena home, Leo Bulgarini traveled through his leveled neighborhood, past scorched houses and gutted businesses, to check on his restaurant.

As he approached the corner of Altadena Drive and Lake Avenue, about a half-mile from his incinerated house, he immediately noticed charred rubble where the quirky Bunny Museum and Open Road Bicycle Shop once stood. It was less than a football field away from his restaurant and gelateria, Bulgarini Vino Cucina.

During a visit to Los Angeles burn areas Friday, President Trump sought to convince California officials that the state’s system of water management needs a dramatic overhaul.

Trump announced that he was set to approve an executive order “to open up the pumps and valves in the north.”

As firefighters start to get the upper hand on the Eaton and Palisades fires, the focus now shifts to clearing debris from the thousands of destroyed or heavily damaged homes, an effort complicated by hazardous materials and toxic ash.

The process began Friday when a small convoy with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveyed a swath of charred properties along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

President Trump walked through the ruins of Pacific Palisades on Friday, shaking hands with firefighters and speaking to a handful of residents as he took in the devastation brought by firestorms that swept through L.A. County this month.

Leveled properties and charred trees were visible in the background as the president walked through a neighborhood of leveled homes. Firefighters handed the president a white fire helmet adorned with the number 47 on the front and side.

In a somber scene lighted by an orange Los Angeles sunset, President Trump walked through the ruins of Pacific Palisades on Friday, shaking hands with firefighters and speaking to a handful of residents as he took in the devastation wrought by firestorms that swept through L.A. County this month.

Leveled properties and charred trees were visible in the background as the president walked through a neighborhood of destroyed homes. Firefighters handed him a white fire helmet with No. 47 on the front and side.

After an epic dry streak that helped fuel devastating fires, Southern California this weekend will get its first real rain of the winter.

Any moisture will help with the region’s parched, combustible landscape. Yet there is concern that the upcoming rain may provide only temporary relief. After this weekend, a dry spell could return — raising serious questions about whether dangerous fire weather could return sooner than later.

Los Angeles County officials missed dozens of opportunities for water infrastructure improvements that experts say probably would have enabled firefighters to save more homes during the Palisades fire, public records show.

As crews battled the blaze, attempting to extinguish flames that burned huge swaths of L.A. County and killed at least 11 people, some hydrants ran dry.

When the federal government in 2012 launched Wireless Emergency Alerts — a new system that allowed officials to send loud, screeching alarms to cellphones across a large area — many local emergency management officers were wary of the technology.

In 2017, as the Tubbs fire engulfed Northern California’s wine country, officials in Sonoma and Napa counties decided against sending such mass wireless alerts, worrying that they would cause county-wide gridlock and panic. Instead, they relied on an older system that sent messages to a smaller number of landlines and cellphone numbers voluntarily submitted by residents. Ultimately, 22 people perished.

As raging wildfires continue to torment Southern California, estimates of the total economic loss have ballooned to more than $250 billion, making it one of the most costly natural disasters in U.S. history.

Early estimates by AccuWeather and JP Morgan put the damage in the $50-billion range, but the expected toll quickly rose to more than triple that amount as fires spread through neighborhoods in Altadena, Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

Michael Gessl’s house survived the Palisades fire that destroyed much of his neighborhood, but something else is making him nervous.

Rain.

After flames leveled nearly 500 homes in Bel-Air and Brentwood in 1961, Los Angeles had a reckoning over firefighting.

By 1964, city leaders had added 13 fire stations, mapped out fire hydrants, purchased helicopters and dispatched more crews to the Santa Monica Mountains. To accommodate growth in Pacific Palisades, they built a reservoir in Santa Ynez Canyon, as well as a pumping station “to increase fire protection,” as the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s then-chief water engineer, Gerald W. Jones, told The Times in 1972.

Some policyholders who lost their homes in the Los Angeles fires are not getting claims advances that are due to them, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara alleged Thursday.

In response, Lara issued a bulletin reminding all California insurers that the law requires victims who have suffered total losses to get advance payments for their living expenses and loss of contents.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Thursday that her brother was among the thousands of people who lost their homes in the Palisades fire.

“The loss that you’re going through, I share indirectly. It’s hit my family too,” Bass said at a meeting of the Pacific Palisades Community Council. “My brother, who has lived in Malibu for 40 years, been through many fires, evacuated many times — this time didn’t get away.”

Southern California’s fire season refuses to quit, even with rain on the horizon.

In the last day, hundreds of weary firefighters have battled multiple fires in the hills around Los Angeles and Ventura counties, including a massive blaze near Castaic, an early morning fire in the Sepulveda Pass that threatened Brentwood and Bel-Air, and another that pushed into Ventura County farmland Thursday morning.